Labs

Macromedia Dreamweaver is the professional designer's tool of choice, so a budget offering from the same developer that concentrates on ease-of-use has to be an attractive proposition. So just what web authoring power does Macromedia Contribute provide?

The simple answer is very little. For layout, Contribute offers basic table handling but nothing as advanced as CSS positioning. Text formatting from the main toolbar is slightly more advanced as you can quickly apply preset CSS paragraph and character styles - but you can't create your own. Graphics handling is similarly basic as you can only load existing GIF and JPEG format files. And you can forget about adding any dynamic scripting and interactivity.

In short, there's nowhere near enough power to enable users to create a working site from scratch. The lack of power is deliberate, as Contribute is a web authoring package with a difference - it's designed to work with existing sites. Central to this is the

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ability to browse to a live page on the server, download it to your system, edit it and then republish it. In other words, Contribute is designed for editing pages rather than originating sites (though you can of course add new pages).

The first obvious question is: why would you want to tie one hand behind your back like this? The answer is safety and simplicity. Creating pages that work successfully on different browsers and platforms, while ensuring that they conform to the site's overall look-and-feel, isn't child's play, as there's always the danger that non-experts could mess up completely. With Contribute's subset of power combined with Macromedia's unrivalled experience of working with HTML/XHTML, that danger is removed. If all you want to do is to update text or add a link, Contribute is a safe and simple bet.

The next question is: if Contribute can't create your site from scratch, who does? The answer is someone who knows what they're doing (preferably a Dreamweaver expert who can take advantage of Contribute's support for Dreamweaver templates to manage just what elements on a page are editable and which are not). After all, knowing how to create a truly successful site requires a lot more than picking the best authoring package (see next month's feature), and posting an amateurish effort can do more harm than good.

Macromedia Contribute's success is that it enables everyone to do what they do best: the designers take care of setting up an efficient and attractive working site, while the contributors take care of the content.